


Little Earthquakes

by SenkoWakimarin



Series: Let Them Eat Flesh [10]
Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Blood, Cannibalism, M/M, Only the Most Languid Loving Sex for this AU Wrap-up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 15:54:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17247086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: Things that should have been said finally are.





	Little Earthquakes

Frank gets more visitors in the hospital that he would have expected. He hadn’t wanted to go, but he’d been unconscious when the cops had responded to the neighbour’s 911 call and David was probably right that they were better safe than sorry when it came to the head trauma. He sort of figures he owes it to David, if he’s going to carry on living, to at least do some measure of self-care.

Karen cries. She cries like she hates doing it and tells him to look at something else while she does it and he ends up staring out the window and holding her hand, hot as blood in his own. David leaves the room while she’s there. Which would be nice if the reasoning weren’t so awkwardly obvious.

They need to talk, still, but Frank will be damned if he’s going to have that conversation while he’s in the hospital, so he says nothing when David comes back less than two minutes after Karen says her goodbyes, exactly like someone who’d been waiting in the hall but didn’t want to seem like they had been lingering.

During Madani’s visit, David sits on the bed, putting himself physically between her and Frank. The logic behind that is a little less clear to Frank, because it comes across as protective well enough, but Madani isn’t there to threaten. She asks after David’s family in the same tones as she assures them that no, David is not at risk for arrest because it was plain that he’d acted in defense of another and his home.

As for Frank, she claims his cover isn’t blown and that as far as the media is aware, Russo escaped from the hospital where he’d been under guard since waking, and had been shot during an attempted break in. Frank hadn’t even been mentioned save by a few conspiracy theorists. She is pleasant and professional, and she shakes David’s hand like she is thanking him, not just saying goodbye.

When Curt shows up, the day before Frank is released, David gets up and Frank thinks he’s going to leave, the way he had when Karen had come, but he doesn’t. He circles the chair he’d pulled up by the bed and stands awkwardly by the door, looking almost guilty as Curt passes him and settles in the abandoned chair.

Curtis has a talent for making difficult conversations happen smoothly. Frank envies that, always has; he tends to start and stop and flounder through any conversation that even approached emotions. Sitting in the hospital with machines humming and beeping around him, covered in thick blankets because the hospital doesn’t allow electric heating pads or blankets in patient rooms, Curtis covers a variety of pleasantries while still managing to cut through Frank’s avoidance. He says he’s sorry it went down the way it did, but not that Billy’s dead.

For what it’s worth, he shakes David’s hand too, and makes no effort to disguise that it’s a thank you. Frank can’t hear what he mutters to David, but whatever it is, the guilty nervous look fades a bit, letting David almost relax as Curtis leaves.

Several times over the week he’s stuck in the hospital under observation, Sarah and the kids visit. The kids climb onto the bed and lay tucked one on either side of him, and Sarah squeezes his hand, conscientious of his bruised knuckles. He expects her to be angrier about everything, him bringing danger back to them, her husband killing a man, the house being trashed the way it most certainly still was when she’d arrived. But then, he’d expected anger from her when he’d come skulking, looking for a place to stay until he could get his feet under him.

It was alarming, really, how willing they all were to have him worm his way into their lives.

Mostly, though, it’s just Frank and David alone in that room, watching the dance of doctors, patients, and nurses go on through the halls. The hospital fed Frank better than the CDC rations would have allowed. Research had shown a link between regular meals and faster healing among infected, so when Frank was brought a meal three times a day, it was always served with at least three bite-sized chunks of human meat.

Frank can feel the difference by the evening of his second day, his body feeling looser than it had in months, his pulse a little faster, the bluish cast from his lowered circulation giving way to warmth. He could think easier, no longer getting hung up on nonsensical detail.

For seven days, David hardly leaves his side, and Frank can’t bring himself to mention it because he’s self-aware enough to know that it’d sound ungrateful, maybe cruel. He’s not practiced in thank-yous, in gratitude, hadn’t been long before he lost his family. His first family. He says nothing because silence has always worked before to show that he at least doesn’t mind what’s being done, which is enough for David to continue doing it because David takes whatever scraps Frank offers and makes a meal of them.

That’s unfair, and Frank wants to fix it, but first they have to talk, and he won’t bumble his way through this conversation while hooked up to a machine that displays his heart rate.

He’s released after a seven-day observation, feeling stiff and sore like the day after a big fight should feel. They hadn’t given him much in the way of pain management throughout his stay, as far as he could tell simply because he hadn’t asked and he was infected. Which seemed like some bullshit, but he’d dealt with worse pain with less medical assistance, so he didn’t complain. Not complaining, after all, would get him out quicker, and he had things to do.

It was only in moving that the pain really came alive, and even then, it wasn’t exactly _pain_ , more a sort of unpleasant tightness in his muscles. Apprehension and just plain exhaustion from getting his ass kicked. The doctors had said something about his diet and previously acquired head injuries having contributed to how beat to shit he still felt, but hey -- other than a new broken nose (how many times had he gotten it broken by this time, god only knew) nothing had actually broken, and even with a slowed healing rate from the mutation, his nose would heal. Nothing permanent, nothing lost; he would be fine.

David offers to get him a wheelchair to transport him to the car in the tone David used when he wanted to be able to pretend to have been joking if Frank got irritable about it but really was serious. It was his ‘let me help you, or at least don’t get mad if you won’t’ voice. Frank gives him a look and shrugs into his coat, grimacing at the movement, and David drops the subject.

Interesting how getting his way makes him feel like an asshole sometimes.

It’s a brilliant Monday morning when David leads them out into the hospital parking garage and hesitates just a second before coming around to the passenger side and making sure Frank gets into the car without issue. He gives him this look the whole time, like he was daring Frank to say something about it, and that just highlighted what an absolute dick Frank has acted like pretty much through the entirety of their relationship, and he probably deserves to feel small and irritated at himself over it.

He says ‘thank you’ when David closes the door for him, but of course, there’s a car door between them and David is already walking around the car, so it’s not like he’s heard. He doesn’t repeat himself, and David makes no mention of it. Parr for the fucking course, really.

When they get back to the house, David goes to the kitchen and Frank is tired in a way that absolutely demands to be dealt with, so he just trudges up the stairs, frustrated with himself for not just talking to David in the car -- or better, in the hospital, addressing the issue when it was fresh, because the longer he sat on it, avoiding it, the worse and more awkward it felt trying to bring it up.

_David, I know I’ve been an asshole and I’m sorry._

It’s obscene, really, how hard it is to say something both honest and simple. Almost as obscene as the speed at which his consciousness starts to fade the moment he gets under the warm blanket and rests his head on a pillow that doesn’t go immediately flat. He has time to frown, curling uncomfortably on his side, and then he’s out.

When he wakes up, it’s because David is shaking him, and it’s with the groggy uncertainty that comes with an intense nap, unsure of the time -- unsure of the _day_ \-- and expecting an attack. He tenses and David’s hand lingers on his shoulder, cool under the blanket. David’s hands on his bare skin feel like the most important thing in the world, grounding at the very least, and he registers by the lighting that he could only have been asleep for half an hour at the most.

“I made tea,” David says, withdrawing his hand. “Your paperwork said to avoid caffeine so no coffee, but also yes warm drinks, so. Tea.”

Frank makes himself sit up, trying not to make a face at the way the stitches in his side tug and pull with every move. David’s hand remains halfway raised, uncertain, and Frank understands. Last time they were in this room together, it hadn’t exactly ended pleasantly. Frank’s fault, which means Frank needs to fix it.

So, he’ll fix it.

Having been fed way more often the nutrients his body craved, a goodly amount three times a day rather than rationing a half pound of meat throughout a week (or starving for one because you’d been such a jackass you decided to just skip the awkward hours waiting alone with the guy you’d chased out of your bed and hadn’t gotten your meal delivery last week), Frank finds that he can move a good deal faster, even if he’s still kind of getting lost in his own thoughts.

Snagging David’s wrist and pulling him down onto the bed with him is easy, in that capacity. As far as pure physicality goes, it’s as simple as breathing; David doesn’t really resist at all. Rather, he moves like he wants to be drawn in, and Frank can feel his pulse under his thumb, slow but heavy, nervous as his own.

“I wanna talk,” he says, and David freezes for a second before he _smiles_ , as sweet and welcome as sun after a storm.

He half expects David to offer him an out on actually having to talk about any of this shit. David, after all, very often does that kind of thing. When he doesn’t, Frank stumbles, trying to figure out the place to start.

“I’ve got the money together to get a place back in the city,” is what he says, and knows immediately that it was absolutely the wrong thing to say, because even though David’s gotten better at keeping his expression neutral, he’s still not _good_ at it.

“That’s, that’s great, Frank,” he starts, and then shuts up when Frank tightens his grip on his hand, like a warning, or maybe a request.

“I don’t want to though,” he says, and tries not to lose himself in the return of that sunny smile. Really, David has no business being that pretty. “I need you to think rationally about this. If you want me to stay. If you’re letting me stay here out of,” _pity ,_  he almost says, but he catches it in his teeth, grimaces, and instead says, “concern that I have no other option, you don’t need to. And if, after the shit that just happened, you want me to go, I will.”

David’s eyes scan over his face, and Frank can _feel_ him doing that analyst bullshit, putting together clues from microexpressions and the context he’s picked up from months of solid interaction between them. David putting everything together, not just the words Frank had to work so hard to say, but the meaning in the actions, and inactions, over the last few weeks.

He looks like he’s focusing so hard, and Frank feels so bizarrely nervous. David finally twigging to the danger of letting Frank stay here, telling him to hit the road, was a very real possibility, and Frank was a little blown away by how much he didn’t want it to happen. He wanted David to want him to stay, but he didn’t dare make any more of a display to that effect than he already had.

After a silence that seems to stretch for hours  -- so twenty seconds, at least -- David nods, just slightly. “Do you really think I’d want you to go? After everything. What is it gonna take to get it through to you that you can’t scare me away? You can’t chase me off. I’m not gonna _leave,_  Frank, and I’m sure as hell not going to ask _you_ to go anywhere either.”

Weird, the way his chest starts to hurt almost _exactly_ like heartburn when David places his free hand over Frank’s, so Frank’s hand, all bruised knuckles and calluses, is caught between David’s.

“Okay,” he manages, as if there isn’t a swarm of butterflies kicking up a fit around his chest, in his lungs and the hollows of his heart. Closing his eyes, he forces himself to focus in spite of the warmth building between them, dizzying and seductive, when David squeezes his hand gently. “I’ve been acting like an ass,” he says, grits his teeth against the words, and then says them anyway, “I’m sorry. I’m going to be better.”

Apologies used to be easier, when he apologized for incidental mistakes, not the sum of his personality as he’d presented it for the duration of knowing a person. The man he’d decided to be, the one who hunted down the bastards who took his family, was no one’s friend. He was lonely and alone, and whether Frank liked it or not, he deserved to be. The way he treated people, pushed them so sharply away, no one should have to put up with that.

David has though, he’s put up with it for months, seen more of Frank than Frank would ever normally have allowed.

“I’ve been selfish, and I --”

Turns out David can move pretty fast too, especially when Frank’s decidedly looking elsewhere. Suddenly his hands are on Frank’s face and he’s kissing him, gentle but intense, like it’s the only way to shut him up.

At the very least, it gets Frank’s eyes back on David as he sits back. “You cannot be serious right now. You put yourself through hell over and over again last year, so I could come home. You let me… and then I _ruined your life_ as a thank you because the idea of you dying…”

There’s the barest pause, a drawing of breath, and then Frank growls something like, “Shut up”, fist closed tight in David’s shirt, dragging him into another kiss. After a moment, David pushes against Frank, shoving him against the pillows, curving over him, taking control. It feels good, natural, easy to give it to David, just as it had in the power station. Frank’s legs are still folded like he’s sitting, his torso pushed flat to the mattress in a truly awkward position he does nothing to fight. His side aches and his hips don’t care for it, and really Frank is maybe completely out of his depth here, but it feels good.

It feels good, and he’s tired of denying it.

There’s a blanket between them, and Frank takes advantage of David standing to get under it properly with him, stretching his legs out and finding a more comfortable position. David soon is back pressed against him, only he can shove his hands under Frank’s undershirt, and does so. Fingers graze over the line of stitches in Frank’s side and then up, skirting his ribs, the rise of his pectoral, thumb pressing and circling a nipple, then down they go again.

Between the electric blanket and their ardour, things are starting to warm up nicely. David always kisses him like it’s absolutely the only thing worth doing at any given time, and Frank may not understand the sentiment, but he sure as hell can appreciate it. Between David’s mouth and David’s hands, Frank feels almost hot, surprised by how quickly he can fall back into the same sort of hungry, desperate headspace he’d gone to when they slept together the first time.

David kissing at his throat sends a jolt of arousal through him so powerful it almost hurts, the butterflies in his guts in full frenzy now. It feels like he can’t breathe, there’s simply not enough air; David’s teeth graze over his skin and he can feel the tenuous hold he’s got on his control waver with the clench of his hand to the back of David’s neck.

“Stop, stop stop stop,” Frank makes himself say, pushing his hand against David’s chest until David lets him loose and sits back, looking alarmed. “There’s somethin’ else we gotta talk about.”

“Are we going to die in the next twenty, thirty minutes if we don’t talk first?” David asks, voice rough in the way it always got when he was worked up. Frank finds himself considering carefully, much more carefully than the playful question warrants. Because the way David asks, it’s clear he _wants_ to just continue, but he also knows that David will stop if he tells him to, and will have the conversation they need to have, but really, he wants this a lot more than more talking. He shakes his head just once, braced for irritation at the interruption, and David just laughs and starts unbuttoning his pants.

And really, it’s like picking up a well-loved book and flipping to an old bookmark, starting anew right where they left off. David’s hands are so careful, pressing gently against bruises, over abrasions and cuts; he touches Frank like it means something to be careful with him, like he needs to reacquaint himself with sorely missed territory.

He’s got Frank’s pants off, tossed carelessly on the floor, kissing him while he strokes Frank’s cock in slow, gentle movements of his wrist. Too slow, too gentle, so that Frank is shuddering as he stiffens in that grip, biting against David’s lips to keep from making a bunch of noise. He clutches at the sheets when David’s hand wanders over his thighs, under his balls, warm now but still unexpected, insinuating along the crack of his ass as he asks, “Do you have any, uh…”

“God, no, I don’t have any fucking lube, but if you fucking stop now I will hurt you, David, I will break your goddamn arm, I will --”

David laughs at the threat, which is good, because Frank wouldn’t, would never hurt him, but it’s a damn near thing when David rolls back out of the bed. “Stay right there, Frank. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

Laying there with his shirt rucked up under his arms, nothing on below the waist, painfully hard and rapidly losing that sweet warmth that had gotten so intense between them is probably one of the most trying experiences of Frank’s life. He stares at the ceiling, the play of morning light -- it’s still not yet noon, he can hardly believe that -- and listens to the sound of David rummaging around in the master bedroom. He sits up and yanks his shirt the rest of the way off and tries not to wince when he pulls the stitches on his side again.

He supposes he must make some kind of sight, because when David comes back he hesitates in the doorway, eyes widening just a tiny bit, his skin almost glowing with manufactured warmth. Then he shuts the door and almost jumps back into the bed, taking just enough care not to hurt Frank as he gets on top of him. Sinking his fingers into David’s hair, Frank is a lot less considerate, yanking him down into a rough kiss.

It’s need, unbridled and undisguised, so huge and consuming that it leaves no room for worry or guilt. Frank has thoughts for nothing but David and David and David, more more more, as much as he can get. David kisses him as he starts working him open, and it’s almost what Frank needs, David in him and around him, awareness paring down to just the points of contact between them, so he’s gasping open-mouthed against the pillows as David bites his shoulders, his neck.

They’ve never taken their time in this. It’s always been rough, driven by worry for each other masked as irritation, two bodies coming together in quick passion, no time for niceties. Frank never considered the possibility for anything else, for David to _want_ to make it anything else.

“I’m good, we’re good, please David, just fuckin’, _now_ please.”

It had been a _clear_  invitation for David to remove his fingers and replace them with his cock, but David certainly seems content, for the moment, to fuck Frank with the former. He does it in slow thrusts, twisting his hand and flexing his fingers as he withdraws them so that Frank can never quite forget the swell of his knuckles, of the not quite smooth or easy shape inside him.

And they both know, because it’s impossible to deny between them, that if Frank set his mind to it, it would be easy enough for him to take control, roll them and take what he wants as hard and fast as he wants. But that’s part of this too, this is communication, the way sex always has been communication; this is Frank showing and telling David that he doesn’t _want_ to take control, that he trusts him.

“God, I could watch you all day,” David says softly, and he’s actually sweating, the blanket drawn up around him; his cheeks are red and his eyes are bright, sparked, delighted. “I’ve been thinking about this, wanting this, wanting _you_. I thought you regretted --”

“Never,” Frank says sharply, the crisp tone only partially out of surprise that David would ever think he regretted anything. “Now stop talking, for fuck’s sake.”

Sometimes, the sheer amount of smug that settles on David’s face is enough to make Frank really miss the old days when punching him was a valid option. He does something with his hand, rolling his wrist and flexing his fingers in a way that is clearly more about bragging than anything. It doesn’t help that Frank’s traitor body surges toward the sensation, hips snapping helplessly up, heels digging into the sheets, his eyes squeezing closed.

“Fuck’s sake,” he grinds out, and that’s all he manages before David’s moving again, on top of him, kneeling between his spread knees. Frank hooks his legs around David’s middle, digs his feet against David’s back, and jerks him in close. David seems to have finally, _thank god,_  gotten the message. He’s hard, even without having been touched much, a feat given their condition, and it takes Frank a second to register that David is that hard because of him, because watching him react was getting him off, and why that’s such a goddamn revelation Frank couldn’t say, because right about that moment is the moment David pushes into him, and he’s gone.

No more revelations, no more distractions, just sensation, eating him up from the inside, burning through him. Turns out, ridiculously slow, sensual prep makes hard, fast fucking a lot easier, and he can feel David’s restraint waver in the tremble of his arms, the gentle pinch of teeth closing to hard on his neck. He can feel bruises blossoming where David’s worrying his skin, that same spot he’s always favoured, where he already has a small collection of pin-mark scars from David biting so hard their first time he’d drawn blood.

Fights fade away into nothing, for Frank. Every fight he’s ever had is just a blur of adrenaline and pain, even while he’s in the middle of it, dodging and swinging and shooting as required. It’s all reactive, muscle and instinct, moving without time to think.

Sex is different, but similar. Certainly he’s not lingering, not really _thinking_ , but sex feels eternal in the loss of control, the giving, the taking, the tidal pull of bodies in concert. It’s a lot, more than it seems possible to handle, and god, but they’re warm like this, warmer than he ever thought he could get again. It feels so good, so much better than he thinks it has any right to feel.

He makes this awful noise when David wraps a hand around him, teeth dragging down his shoulder before kissing wetly over his collarbones. Objectively not sexy, but in the moment it’s just another note in the sensory cacophony that seems set on tearing him apart, and he can only moan, trying to lurch up into the touch and finding himself unable.

When he comes, David’s name is the only word he can seem to find, panting it as David fucks him through it, until it feels like he’s going to go insane, oversensitized and desperate. Only when it feels like his brain is leaking out his ears does David bite down hard, that same spot again, just shy of tearing a new chunk out of Frank, it seems.

Coming down in the aftermath, David pushes the blanket back, looking Frank over for torn stitches or any other injury. They have to be more careful with that, given the slowed healing, but he finds nothing but a few bruises, and seems a little proud of them, a little ashamed too.

Kissing the bruised, bitten joint of shoulder and neck, David says, “Okay, what else do we need to talk about,” like they’d paused for a snack or something, not intense, sweaty, loving sex. Frank huffs a noise that David accurately reads as amused, seeing as how he starts grinning, propped up on his side next to Frank, their legs entangled.

Frank thinks for a minute, trying to find the right words. It’s harder, when you care about upsetting a person. When you don’t want to push them away. When you’re not reminding them how dangerous being around you is supposed to be.

“Someone sent Bill here. He didn’t expect to find me, by what he said.”

“Oh.”

David exhales the word almost nonchalantly, but Frank’s learned to read him, too, and he knows the edges of fear curling over that tone.

“I should have said something sooner. In the hospital, or… before, when you. Before, it should have been the first thing on my mind, and I fucked up.”

A gentle, unexpected kiss shuts him up, and when David pulls back, his face is caught in this beautiful mix of worry and amusement. “If they’re after me -- they are after _me_ , right?”

“Yeah, that’s what I gathered. Bill wasn’t exactly laying out detail though.”

“No, it’s, whatever, if they’re after me, whoever they are, then I can’t… stay here. Not if they’re willing to… do that. Fuck, Frank, _shit,_ do I go to Madani? I mean I can disappear but…”

“But.”

They look at each other, naked and entwined, and it doesn’t need to be said, not yet, but they both feel it, Frank thinks. The desire to remain together. The want. The love, maybe, if Frank is really still capable of that.

“I can’t tell Sarah, can I? _Fuck_ , man.” David sounds anguished by that, and Frank frowns. He takes David’s hand in his and squeezes gently.

“I’ll talk to her. I’m not leaving, right? This is, going after creeps like this, we did this all last year, David. We can do it again. We just have to be careful. _You_ have to be careful. But I’m not walking from this. And I’m not letting anyone go after you.”

And David looks, god help them both, _relieved_ that Frank is with him, that Frank is already working out some rudimentary plan of attack. He looks _happy_ , in some fucked up weird way. He’s beautiful, and Frank barely thinks about it before lifting his hand to brush hair from David’s forehead, leaning up to kiss him.

“It’s going to be fine.”

**Author's Note:**

> :3 see ya next year, kids.


End file.
